RIC lobbying to keep the ELC open 24 hours a day
Jessica Burk
Issue date: 4/11/08 Section: News
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With Associated Student Government support, Residents' Interhall Congress will lobby to keep the ELC open 24 hours a day, said Stefan Trim, RIC senator and author of the RIC bill passed in February.
"What we're going to do is sit down and discuss several options with the executive director at University Housing, Randy Alexander, and the ELC director, Charlotte Lee, sometime next week," RIC President Johnny Biggs said.
"The mission of RIC is to be the voice of the on-campus student," Trim said. "Not every student has access to a computer. Printing and Internet access are sometimes unreliable at residence halls. The ELC provides opportunities for students who don't have computer access."
Trim also cited safety as a reason to keep the ELC open all night.
"Why walk to the Union when you could go somewhere closer? This could be a safe haven for friends to congregate together to get studying done," he said.
The Northwest Quad, Reid, Futrall, Holcombe and Maple Hill are halls that have their own computer labs or are within walking distance of two and a half minutes of a computer lab, Trim said.
"The [ELC] is centrally located where it can serve Humphreys, Yocum, Gregson and Gibson. It's a two-minute walk from Humphreys and Yocum," he said.
The machines in the computer labs are running anyway, no matter if students are using them or not, he said.
"For 96 hours, the facility is inoperable, which means those same 96 hours can be used by the students. That energy can be consumed and put to better use," he said.
Trim was invited to Gregson Hall, where he said students supported the resolution.
"I want to do whatever the students want to do," Biggs said. "It's going to cost money. The administration is going to want to protect the equipment, and they are going to need people there. That's where the money comes in. I'm there to protect the students."
Lee said the computer lab is not part of the ELC and will be moving to a more open location in the fall.
"We're certainly open to look at keeping the ELC open," she said. "What we have done is we tracked the participation of students by the hour. Generally, we have found after 8:00 that participation falls off. So for us to expand would take a significant increase of staff for supervision and tutoring.
"At this point we don't see that enough students would use that to make it cost-effective," Lee said.
UA junior Arthur Kufdakis said he uses the ELC once or twice per week.
Keeping the ELC open 24 hours a day wouldn't be a bad thing, he said.
"Sometimes when I have questions late at night, it takes me longer than if I would have just asked them, especially because I work during the day," Kufdakis said. "It also depends a lot on the quality of the tutor because some of them are more agreeable than others."
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